


every sky

by Tedronai



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Gen, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tedronai/pseuds/Tedronai
Summary: When you first meet your damnation, he’s wearing another man’s face.
Relationships: Nirai Kujen & Nirai Mahar, Nirai Kujen/Shuos Jedao
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	every sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WolffyLuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolffyLuna/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! ^_^ I've always been intrigued by Mahar as a character, and his relationship with Kujen, and I was so happy to be matched with your request for exactly that! I hope you enjoy it~

When you first meet your damnation you think you must be dreaming. He’s wearing another man’s face--though you don’t know it yet--and he’s all beauty and charm and mathematics, and you’re fifteen and desperate and half in love with him already.

By the end of that meeting you’re still fifteen, still desperate--oh so desperate--but that love, any potential thereof, has turned to ashes. No matter; from the ashes you dig up another kind of devotion, a core of steel and tell yourself it will do. You don’t need to love Nirai Kujen; you don’t need to even like him; you just need to serve him and maybe, with the vast Nirai resources at his disposal, he can work a miracle and save your brother, and you’d do anything for your brother. 

_Anything,_ you tell Kujen, and the face of a dead man smiles back at you; dead, because you’re going to take his place, though you don’t know that yet but afterwards you believe _he_ did because you saw something like resignation in his eyes.

  
  


Kujen wants your body. 

_I don’t mean to bed you,_ he says, waving an immaculately manicured hand in a dismissive gesture, as if there was another logical conclusion you were supposed to draw from his phrasing. 

You want to demand clarification but the amused condescension makes you bite your lip and hold your peace. You think you’re pretty enough, but you’re fifteen, tall and skinny and awkward with it. You try to think about what else Kujen might want your body for, your imagination jumping wildly from illegal human experiments to the forms of slavery you’ve read about in history books. And as Kujen continues, you nearly laugh because the truth is both exactly as you guessed, and like nothing you could have ever imagined.

  
  


You’re to become Kujen’s face to the world. A revenant, he explains, needs an anchor, and he’s chosen you to succeed the man whose mouth speaks the words to you. You strain to hear something in the man’s voice, anything to suggest that he’s disappointed or angry at being replaced, but the voice is completely smooth. Only a flicker of something like fear in the depths of the beautiful eyes tells you there’s someone there who’s not Kujen himself. You stop yourself from thinking about that, about this man you know nothing about; you stop yourself well short of thinking about how this will likely be your future, too.

 _Will I be able to complete my studies?_ you ask, as if that matters, as if there aren’t a thousand more pressing concerns that should be addressed.

 _Oh, sweetheart,_ Kujen purrs, clearly delighted by your priorities, or lack thereof. He spreads his arms as if to embrace you, though you could as soon imagine being hugged by the Vidona Hexarch, and indeed he makes no move to close the distance between you. _I will tutor you myself._

  
  


The transfer is done in a top security Nirai facility. Afterwards you have no memory of the trip there or the preparations; you simply wake up and your body no longer belongs to yourself. You can hear Kujen inside your head, now--the _real_ Kujen, not his anchor. _Previous anchor,_ you correct yourself numbly, trying not to think about things you’d be better off not thinking about. You mostly succeed.

Kujen, as it turns out, is a chatty ghost. Fluttering about the room as a shadow filled with moths, he talks about the technicalities of being an anchor; you don’t really hear half of it and can’t help thinking, a little hysterically, that maybe you should have asked for the briefing beforehand. Not that it would have mattered; by the time Kujen’s true state of existence was revealed to you, you’d relinquished the option of backing off already.

 _We’re going to need to grow out your hair,_ you suddenly hear in the midst of the tech talk, and that startles you out of your daze. For somebody without a body, Kujen appears extremely satisfied with the effect of his words. You run a hand through your hair, or at least you think it’s you but you can’t be completely sure; Kujen has the ability to take full control of your body though for now he seems to content himself with backseat driving. You’ve never thought about having long hair but you figure at this point you may as well just go along without trying to object. 

When the topic of the revenant’s chatter turns to wardrobe and choice of accessories, you briefly feel like screaming.

  
  


You finish your studies, though you never finish learning from Kujen. You work on projects both for the Hexarchate and for Kujen’s personal amusement, and sometimes it’s difficult to tell what’s what. 

  
  


Your brother dies. He dies surrounded by the best medical technology in the Hexarchate, in the most luxurious hospital known to mankind, provided every comfort humanly possible, but he dies. 

Your grief can’t be measured in numbers and therefore you can’t express to Kujen how much you’re hurting, and it’s obvious how much he doesn’t understand, but he indulges your request for peace--if not solitude--and remains silent for seven whole days. You’re not sure whether you love or hate him for it; he can drop everything and just exist for seven days, he has literally all the time in the universe, while your little brother’s time has been cut so brutally short. In the end you decide it’s not worth the effort to hate someone like Kujen, who--you’re beginning to suspect--doesn’t fully grasp the concept of emotions such as hate.

Somewhere, in the depths of your soul, in a place deep that Kujen can never reach it, you hate him anyway.

  
  


A decade into your partnership with Kujen you think you’ve seen it all; you’re twenty-five and you share your body with the single most powerful man in the Hexarchate, if not the entire universe, and for as long as that lasts, nothing can touch you. 

Then, you meet Shuos Jedao.

You’re intrigued by the concept of another revenant, and you’re intrigued by the legendary general’s reputation, and you’re more than a little shocked and dismayed by what he and Kujen get up to off the record.

It’s not the first time Kujen’s used you to have sex, but the previous times you’ve at least had the chance to agree on the choice of partners, and those partners werent inhabiting disposable bodies whose original owners had even less say in the matter. 

Jedao’s anchor is young and beautiful--the way Kujen likes them--and horribly clumsy, and the last part makes no sense to you at first as Kujen appreciates physical perfection. Of course, when you see him interact with Jedao, you realise the truth of why Kujen would put him in a body like that. You can see Jedao knows as well--he’s known Kujen for centuries longer than you, so of course he would--and for a moment you almost feel pity for him. Then you decide that you don’t actually care, and when Kujen takes full control over your body you don’t bother protesting. You just shut yourself off in a corner of your own mind and let your body respond to Jedao’s poor nameless anchor’s touch.

  
  


Immortality wasn’t something you ever dreamt of to begin with, but it has never tempted you less than when Kujen explains to you exactly how he’s going to achieve it. True immortality, independent of a living anchor to host his ghost. The science behind his vision is solid, you can tell that much at a glance--and hours upon hours of calculations further make certain of it--but the thought of existing in a moth body fills you with such revulsion you think you might be sick.

Kujen--after walking you to the bathroom just in case--gives you the subvocal equivalent of a shrug and a suit-yourself, and the topic is closed for now. He’ll ask again, and again, over the years, but to his credit he never explicitly tries to persuade you and drops the subject when you decline.

After the seventh time it finally occurs to you that this might be his way of saying he’ll miss you when you’re gone and he’s moved on to a new anchor. The thought that the Hexarchate’s most dangerous sociopath might harbour fond feelings towards you makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin in a way you haven’t felt since the first few years of your acquaintance. 

If you’re completely honest with yourself, it also breaks your heart a little. 

  
  


The new Jedao could be called a high-functioning human disaster if not for the fact that he’s not human. You watch Kujen play his games with his new toy, and as much as the man-shaped moth disgusts you, you can’t help but find some of its antics refreshing and oddly endearing. 

You still won’t fuck it, but since it doesn’t really want to fuck you either, you figure it’s fair enough.

Of course, the same can’t be said for poor Dhanneth. 

  
  


In the end, you always knew it couldn’t last forever. Sometimes, that thought was all that kept you sane--for a given value of ‘sane’, anyway. 

Still, kneeling on the floor before Jedao, all you can think about is how you never thought you’d be the one left alive. It was always going to be Kujen, beautiful and brilliant and indestructible, moving on to a fresh anchor after he’d used you up. It was always going to be Kujen but now he’s gone and you have no idea what to do.

For sixty years you’ve belonged to him, he’s been with you day and night, and now it’s just you, alone and naked despite the silk and lace and diamonds you’re wearing, and you don’t know if you’re even a person anymore.

And so you beg Jedao to pull the trigger.

  
  


Finally, he does.


End file.
